Moved On Over...And Out Of The BIG City!

Monday, June 15, 2015

I made this delicious bread yesterday and it was a big hit! It's been so hot, muggy and stormy here so guess what? I baked it on the grill to keep the house nice and cool! My taste testers really enjoyed it - went through an entire loaf already. Give it a try - and ENJOY! I think I am going to experiment with using different flours too.

Here's the recipe:

AMISH WHITE BREAD

Ingredients:

- 2 cups warm water

- 2/3 cup white sugar

- 1 1/2 tbsp. active dry yeast

- 1 1/2 tsp. salt

- 1/4 cup vegetable oil

- 6 cups flour

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve the sugar in warm water.

2. Add the yeast and continue stirring until well dissolved.

3. Mix salt and oil into the yeast.

4. Mix in flour, one cup at a time.

5. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth.

6. Allow to rise until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.

7. Knead for a few minutes, and divide in half.

8. Shape into loaves, and place the loaves into oiled baking pans.

9. Allow to rise for 30 minutes in a warm room.

10. The bread is ready to be baked when the dough has risen 1 inch above the pans.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Bees seem to be doing well this year. It was a really big deal that one hive survived the harsh Winter.

Over the past couple of weeks we have been dealing with one swarm after another. My husband keeps going in and cleaning out burr comb and queen cells to try and reduce the swarming. I guess nature has something else in mind.

Surprisingly the last two swarms my husband caught seem to be doing well. We might be adding a third hive to the other two.

If you look at the photo you can see the swarm box used to catch a swarm of bees. We have a couple of frames in there and they are going in and out doing there thing.

I need to get a video of swarm catching. As you can imagine it is quite exciting!

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Well the baby chicks were born on Mother's Day! I was SO eggcited! LOL. Out of the 12 we had in the incubator - 8 hatched so from what I read that was pretty average. See photos below - the chicks are all cute and fluffy right now.

The chicks are all snug as a bug under the heat lamp in their new home separated from the big chickens. Dipped each of their beaks in water and food and they went to town eating and drinking. So far so good.

It's been a couple of crazy days around here. As the eggs were hatching we also had our bees swarming. That story will be in my next post! Let's just say we spent a good portion of the day trapping swarms.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Well the exciting process of hatching baby chicks for the first time has officially begun! It's day 3 of our 21 day incubation period. I have been waiting years to try this process out!

So right now I am getting my exercise. I have the unit set up down in the basement and I keep running up and down the stairs checking the temperature and humidity. Learning a ton about the Little Giant 9200 Still Air Incubator. This units seems to work really well - holds the temperature perfectly even though it's styrofoam. SOLD HERE. Temperature has been maintained at about 99.5. I keep filling up the water reservoirs as well to keep the humidity level up.

We have 10 eggs in the incubator...hoping for good results! Stay tuned!

Friday, April 17, 2015

Well it has been a wild ride. It took WAY longer to sell our house in the city than we ever dreamed. I will spare you those details. Ha - But it finally happened!! I have so much to update you on its crazy. Slowly but surely.

It's been a smooth transition to the country. I quit my job and am now working on a farm. Lol. It's wonderful. The freedom has changed my life. No more sitting a a desk staring at my computer! Rotting basically.

Right now we are working on cleaning up the flower beds and prepping for the garden. We will be expanding to make more room for more stuff this year.

We planted in our cold frame this year. See photo - thankfully all that snow is long gone. So far radishes, bok choy, fennel and lettuces. It's only been about two weeks.

Our honey bees survived the winter for the first time. We are very thankful for that...they have been very busy.

There's a lot to do around this 120ish year old farm. Always a work in progress - that's for sure. Loving every minute of it.

This weekend we are going to try incubating our own eggs for the first time. Been waiting a while to give this a try. I will add some photos of the process. I hope it works!